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Honda Motor Co., Ltd.

Website Global and Mobile Support Realized by Akamai

"In recent times, the rise of smartphones and social media has resulted in the diversification of Internet browsing environments used by customers, and a single URL is now displayed on a variety of devices. The introduction of Akamai enables the optimal page to be displayed on each kind of device under a single URL, enabling more efficient operation."

Support for Diversifying Digital Devices

In order to realize the dreams and provide pleasure to its clients, Honda Motor Co., Ltd. ("Honda") is globally developing a wide variety of products ranging from motorcycles, automobiles and general-purpose products to HondaJet. As well as the company newsletter, the company's Public Relations Department/Web and Internal PR Block operates the website for Japanese customers and the global website for the dissemination of information in English across the world.

Prior to the introduction of Akamai, in response to the global increase in mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, Honda had been searching for a solution to the question "how can we create an efficient website that is optimized for each device?"

The introduction of Akamai in response to this allowed for the rapid increase in access at new product launches and the start of promotions to be supported, as well as for the provision of optimal display for diversifying digital devices, and faster display speeds (about three times faster).

Block Director Kenji Jimba says that "the widespread use of social media has caused a significant change in website management." "The sharing and spreading of Honda's web address on social media such as Facebook and Twitter has increased, and a single URL is now referenced by various devices. In the past, separate websites were built and provided for PCs, smartphones and feature phones respectively—however, I don't feel like it could be said that this was particularly convenient for the customer."

"What's more, as the global site is also hosted on the Japanese server, it was necessary to improve access speeds on smartphones from across the world." (Tadamasa Ishibashi)

In order to solve such issues, Honda upgraded its content distribution system to Ion Premier, and, based on the mobile network situation, also introduced AIC (Adaptive Image Compres¬sion), a function for dynamically compressing images, and EDC (Edge Device Characterization), which determines the type and characteristics of the accessing mobile device, such as the display size, OS and browser, and optimizes the display accordingly.

The linking of EDC and CMS allowed content to be provided for multiple devices from a single source. As conventional CMS was a mechanism that reflected the requested content for the device on a request-by-request basis, there was a concern that it would not be able to handle large volume access. After the introduction of EDC, as CMS could reflect content based on the device attributes determined by EDC, and in Akamai a cache could be kept for each device attribute even for the same URL, it became possible to handle large volume access.

Information Sharing Among Akamai Users

With regard to selecting a solution, in addition to the proposal from Akamai, it was mentioned that the ability to refer to places where information is shared between Akamai users was helpful. "We often attend conferences that are sponsored by Akamai, and we have found that multiple global companies that are Akamai users have also been in attendance. We were able to exchange a lot of information regarding websites as well as talk about the successes and failures of other companies, and this allowed us to obtain a large amount of knowledge that we can use in determining website policy in general. We feel that Akamai is different from other companies not only in terms of the quality of its product, but also due to the opportunity to partake in such consultations." (Kenji Jinba).

Updates Now Only Need to Be Performed Once, and SLA of 100% Has Also Been Realized

The smooth sharing of information between Akamai and Honda's system engineers has also allowed cooperation with CMS to run without issues. Shinsuke Taniguchi, the manager of the block, says: "In the past we built a website for PCs and a separate website for mobile devices. However, the ability to provide one set of content across various devices has also led to a reduction in the number of servers that we manage." (Shinsuke Taniguchi).

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Akamai secures and delivers digital experiences for the world’s largest companies. Akamai’s intelligent edge platform surrounds everything, from the enterprise to the cloud, so customers and their businesses can be fast, smart, and secure. Top brands globally rely on Akamai to help them realize competitive advantage through agile solutions that extend the power of their multi-cloud architectures. Akamai keeps decisions, apps, and experiences closer to users than anyone — and attacks and threats far away. Akamai’s portfolio of edge security, web and mobile performance, enterprise access, and video delivery solutions is supported by unmatched customer service, analytics, and 24/7/365 monitoring. To learn why the world’s top brands trust Akamai, visit www.akamai.com, blogs.akamai.com, or @Akamai on Twitter. You can find our global contact information at www.akamai.com/locations. Published 09/18.